Sapper Contour in northern Lynnwood was left in the dark on Thursday morning when four criminals stole overhead cables and took advantage of an open fence along the N1 freeway to get away. The thieves got away with approximately 5m of cable.
Zambli, the security initiative in the area, responded as soon as the power went down. The criminals fled back onto the N1 to a waiting vehicle when they saw the security officers.
John Grant of Zambli said that their quick response after the lights went out probably minimised the extent of the power failure.
”What these criminals do, is they climb up a pole and cut the cable. They then cut the cable again at the other end where it goes from the ground to the next pole. When they saw us approaching they immediately fled,” he said
At 04:00 the incident was reported to the Tshwane metro call centre as a power failure. Numerous residents, Zambli and Siobhan Muller, the metro councillor, for the area tracked the restoration of the power on Thursday.
“By 18:00 I was assured by senior officials that technicians had been on site and that power had been restored. But when I checked with the residents, they said they still had no power. I reported the matter on a regional level immediately and was told that they would investigate. I was assured that they were working on the problem,” she said.
Friday morning at 07:14, Muller again reported the shortage of power to senior officials. “Later, at about 08:00, I again asked what was being done to repair the cables. I was told that technicians were already on their way to the site. By 09:10 when I was at the site, no truck or technician was to be seen, and the cables had not been fixed. By then residents had lost everything in their fridges and freezers due to spoilage in this heat, and the frail care centre at the bottom of Sapper contour has been without power for 30 hours. This while officials claim that ‘power has been restored’,” she said.
She added that from 09:00 to 09:20, she called every senior official she could for answers, but not one was available. “How technicians could have decided that power was restored when the cables were never repaired, is laughable. Clearly service delivery in our city is a farce and the mayor is out of contact with reality,” she said. By 13:30 on Friday, technicians managed to visit the substation and fix the power failure.
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